DRAMA

Not a total disaster, but certainly also not one of Yes best effords. In fact, I can hardly see this album as an Yes album at all. Although I must admit that Trevor Horn´s voice does remind me of Jon Anderson a bit and the vocal arrangements were similar to the trademark Yes sound, the rest is not. It seems that Drama was kind of a transtitional album, or experimental, like so many reviewrs here wrote. An experiment towards pop market maybe? I could barely stand this album at the time: to me Yes without Jon Anderson was not really Yes. I could see Yes without Rick Wakeman (even though the band is much better when he is around).

Geoff Downess keyboards are just annoying here. Please don´t get me wrong, I don´t have any prejudice against Buggles. I didn´t even know about them at the time (though I might have heard their music on the radio around that period). to me they were two unknown faces and I was certain the other members of the band wouldn´t chose second rate musicians to join them. But certainly they were no match for Anderson and Wakeman. The Roger Dean cover was great.

Having said that I must say I heard this album again these days to give it a proper review. I still think it is well below their best 70´s effords (including the much underrated Tormato). It is not bad. It is just very uncharactheristic. It looks more like some band trying to sound like Yes than Yes itself. The opener Machine Messiah is the best track. It is strong, powerful, creative and convincing. I really like it and I think if the whole album would follow this quality I could give Drama at least a four star rating. Unfortunalty things go downhill from then on. You could almost feel the band a bit lost at the beginning of the new decade. Certainly Drama kind of paved the way to the more commercial Yes of 90125 and Big Generator.

Conclusion: a good album, in parts. And not really a Yes CD for me. If they changed their name it would be a lot easier to take it and appreciate it. As it is, 2,5 stars is the most I can give it.